Discover the Magic of Rooibos in South Africa’s Rugged Mountains

I popped a pod into the Nespresso machine in my hotel room, and as tea filled the mug, I inhaled the woody, caramel aroma of rooibos. The broomlike shrub — its name is Afrikaans for “red bush” — is native to the Cederberg Mountains of South Africa’s Western Cape, where temperatures can rise above 100 degrees in summer and drop to near freezing in winter. The region is, in fact, the only place in the world where rooibos grows.

In February, I traveled along the N7 highway north of Cape Town to experience the Rooibos Route, an itinerary of farms, factories, tea shops, and restaurants. I sampled rooibos as a tea, in a milkshake, in a martini, in a steak sauce, and even as an exfoliant during a massage. 

One morning, I rode a Land Cruiser over dirt roads the color of marmalade with a guide, Byron Hartung, and three other guests of Bushmans Kloof Wilderness Reserve & Wellness Retreat to one of 130 rock-art sites on the property. This was a shamanic site of the San, the nomadic hunter-gatherers who first inhabited South Africa. As we gathered around pictographs of cattle with long eland-type bodies and figures tilted in dance, Hartung explained that the rock was more than a canvas to the San — it was a gateway into a spiritual world. The paintings are 3,000 to 10,000 years old. As I gazed at them, in this sheltered spot on the veld, I felt transported back in time.

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The San treated rooibos as medicine, and contemporary research has shown that its unique polyphenols may support heart health, protect against certain cancers, and regulate blood sugar. Indigenous South Africans have long been disenfranchised and impoverished, and have seen little of the wealth that has come from the plant’s global boom. They were also not properly recognized for having discovered and perfected it. But thanks to an agreement that took effect in 2022, they have been officially named the traditional knowledge holders for the plant, and community trusts now receive 1.5 percent of the country’s total annual sales of raw rooibos. (The proceeds are intended to go into development and aid projects throughout the country.)

The idea of the Rooibos Route had percolated for years, as Sanet Stander, who had a tea shop in the area, fielded requests from tourists about visiting farms. In 2012, Stander officially announced the route and created a website that lists activities, such as farm tours, that travelers might not have been able to arrange on their own.

I drove out to the Wupperthal Original Rooibos Cooperative, in the Tra-Tra Valley. More than 70 small-scale farmers of Indigenous descent grow rooibos on plots of land there, slashing the shrubs by hand with sickles. The cooperative, founded in 2009, is housed in a whitewashed building with a thatched roof that German missionaries built in the early 19th century. 

When we entered, heaps of delicate rooibos branches, brought from the surrounding farms and wrapped in white polypropylene bags, lay on the floor. The village of Wupperthal is still a Moravian mission station, and despite the name “cooperative,” the church still owns all of the land and the farmers’ homes, a legacy of the dispossession of Indigenous people during the colonial and apartheid eras. 

In 2021, rooibos became the first African product to be granted “protected designation of origin” status. As with champagne in France, the name rooibos is exclusive to South Africa. “Our ancestors sold rooibos to the missionaries, and it was later commercialized,” Edgar Valentyn, a fifth-generation farmer in Wupperthal, explained to me. “That’s a lot of tea going out into the world. We’re glad it’s being protected so nobody else can call their product rooibos. This is especially good for our farmers who have just a small amount of land.”

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In the town of Clanwilliam, we stopped at the Ou Tronk Museum, housed in a former jail, to view the history of rooibos through a wider lens. The exhibit is filled with old machinery, tools, teapots, tattered vintage packaging, and maps. Informational panels explain the processing and grading of rooibos. A central feature is an old case with more than 30 small glass jars of rooibos samples collected by Benjamin Ginsberg, an immigrant from Russia who pioneered the plant’s commercialization at the beginning of the 20th century.

After an hour’s bumpy drive, we arrived at Skimmelberg, a large-scale organic farm with 300 acres devoted to rooibos. I joined a group of Scandinavian tourists in the plantation’s courtyard, where the fermenting and drying of rooibos leaves take place. I crouched beside a mound of leaves, collected a few needle-like strays, and gave them a gentle rub. As their deep burnt-orange color bled onto my fingertips, I recalled that “Rooibos Tea” was one of the top 10 colors in the Pantone Fashion Color Trend Report for the coming season. I imagined the distinctive tone spreading out into the world, through fashion and other ways. 

The Carmién Tea Shop near Citrusdal is known as the gateway to the Rooibos Route, but I chose it as my exit — one last opportunity to enjoy a cup of tea and a bite to eat. Liezel van der Merwe, Carmién’s sales manager, talked to me about the South African rugby team, the homegrown mixed martial arts champ Dricus du Plessis, and Tyla, the South African singer who had just won a Grammy the previous night. “These things keep the nation together,” she said. “That is also what rooibos does. It gives hope for a better tomorrow.” 

A version of this story first appeared in the December 2024 issue of Travel + Leisure under the headline “Freshly Brewed.”